Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Telemedicine's future in the Pacific region is on the agenda at a symposium today at the Shriners Hospital for Children. Symposium explores
future of telemedicine
in Pacific regionStar-Bulletin staff
More than 50 medical professionals and telecommunications experts from Hawaii, the mainland and Pacific Islands were expected to attend the event.
A multipoint televideo hook-up at 1 p.m. will link the symposium delegates with the North Hawaii Community Hospital on the Big Island, the LBJ Tropical Medical Center in American Samoa, the University of Guam, the Children's Hospital at the University of Southern California and the Health Resources Services Administration office and Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
"Telemedicine has the potential for vastly improving health access and education in the Pacific in the near future," said Dr. Kent Reinker, Shriners Hospital chief of staff.
"Hawaii is unique in its vision in that the state, federal and private sectors have come together to create a unified telemedicine infrastructure that is unequaled in any other state," Reinker said.
The state supported creation of a network that links all state hospitals via a two-way interactive network, which the University of Hawaii linked to a satellite system to access remote Pacific areas.
The Weinberg Foundation donated equipment to every nonprofit hospital in Hawaii so they could communicate via video linkage.
The Shriners Hospital is collaborating with the Defense Department, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Veterans Administration and National Guard to expand the network.
"This network will eventually dramatically decrease the isolation of many areas now separated geographically by vast stretches of the Pacific Ocean," Reinker said.
More than 19,000 children from Hawaii and the Pacific Basin have received free surgical and rehabilitative orthopedic care from the Honolulu Shriners Hospital since 1923.